If you receive a document protected by Information Rights Management, you will be prompted to install the client via the same screen that we saw earlier:

Once you click Yes and have downloaded and installed the client, Information Rights Management will check to see if you have an IRM certificate already installed on the computer. If it doesn’t detect such a certificate, you’ll be prompted to provide your .NET passport credentials to sign up for the service. (You’ll also have an option to sign up for a .NET passport if you don’t already have one.)

The last screen allows you to choose a standard or temporary certificate.

Once you have chosen what type of certificate you want, click Next to finalize the process.

Once this service is completed, Word will let you know that it must connect to the Information Rights Management server to check your credentials as permission to the document is restricted.

(If you already had an Information Rights Management certificate, you would be taken to this step immediately after opening the document and entering those credentials.)

If it finds that your credentials are OK, the document will open with restricted permissions. If it finds that you don’t have permissions, you’ll see this message:

If you click Change User, you can select another .NET passport to set up or to sign into. If you click Yes, a new message in your default e-mail editor will open so you can request permissions from the document’s owner. (If the owner didn’t specify their e-mail address when setting permissions, you will see an error.) Word will also close and you will not be able to open the document. If you click No, Word will close and you still won’t be able to open the document.